Page 131 of Cry Havoc

He remembered the advice from the men who had taken time with him on the ranch in Colorado. Men who had trained with Fairbairn, Sykes, and Applegate:don’t stop fighting until the threat no longer exists.

A company could be right behind these guys. You are on the clock.

Tom’s left hand went to the man’s throat, crushing off his air supply while pinning him to the ground. He had hoped for a quick knockout blow. That was not to be. When a human being is facing an opponent set on extinguishing the gift of life, fires burn, regardless of the level of training.

The SEAL noted that the man he had shot was struggling to his knees.

Finish this.

This guy must have a knife.

Tom let up just enough to allow the man to spin in an attempt to scamper away.

There it was. Next to the canteen on his belt. A sheathed blade.

Tom cracked him on the back of the head with the butt of the pistol and then dropped it and went for the blade, grabbing the back of the man’s neck and smashing his face into the dirt.

Kill or get killed.

His right hand unsnapped a strip of leather securing the blade in a crude canvas sheath, wrapped his hand around the handle, and jerked it free. Even in the throes of combat, he recognized that it was a makeshift, homemade knife. He prayed it was sharp enough to do the job.

It was.

With his opponent on his stomach, Tom dropped his body to fully cover the soon to be dead man and thrust the blade up under the ribs on his right side. It slid through the soldier’s light clothing and entered his body. Tom applied more pressure to the back of his opponent’s neck to ensure he kept eating dirt and prevent him from screaming out. He withdrew the blade and reinserted it in repeated stabs in order to do as much damage as possible.

Get to his heart.

Tom used the blade to flip the smaller man over and then violently thrust it through the muscles of the intercostal spaces between the ribs, penetrating the heart. He quickly moved the blade to the soldier’s neck and slit his throat.

Get to your other opponent before he can get a shot off.

The second man was now on his knees, coughing blood and fighting to breathe. He struggled with the sling of his AK, attempting to bring it around from where it was positioned on his back. As he choked on his own blood, splintered bones, and shattered teeth from his face wound, he pulled the rifle around in front of him.

Tom was on him in an instant. Scurrying the few feet between them, his left hand grabbed the barrel of the AK as it swung forward, jerking it at the same time to keep the man from firing. He saw the terror in the soldier’s eyes as he let go of the rifle and brought his hands up to shield him from the apparition who had appeared out of the jungle. Tom caught him with the knife’s pommel to the side of his temple and then sliced across the neck.

Not deep enough.

The Frogman slid his hand from the rifle to the back of the man’s head and jerked him forward and down, using the man’s knees as a pivot point. He then rotated to the man’s back and positioned the knife adjacent to the collarbone, reaching across with his free hand so both were on the handle of the makeshift blade. He then sunk the blade through the muscles, ligaments, and subclavian artery, the main artery supplying blood to the upper extremities, ratcheting the blade back and forth to do as much damage as possible. After extracting it, he slid it through the man’s neck, cutting through the trachea, carotid, and jugular.

Tom held him down for a moment even after the man stopped squirming. He then pushed himself off and looked up and down the dirt trail, his ribs screaming in a pain he had never before experienced.

Clear.

But for how long?

He had gambled big, with his life and the lives of Quinn and Hiep.

Tom swore. Not at the two men he had just killed, but at the men in Hanoi and Washington who had put them on this patch of dirt.

Don’t get distracted.

Clean this scene.

You don’t have much time. Someone could come around the bend in the trail at any moment.

Is your luck going to hold?

Tom stood and hurled one of the two bicycles as far as he could into the jungle. The pain emanating from his broken ribs almost put him down.